Rent in Williamsburg has risen to the point where a small, clean, $700-a-month, one-bedroom apartment is impossible to find, requests for roomshares are on the rise and complaints about the cost-of-living are played out.

Next door on this very block, “loft building” banners have gone up across construction sites in two empty warehouses. The owners advertise cookie-cutter, 750-1200 square-foot apartments for $2000 – $4000 a month with amenities like all new appliances, double height ceilings, gas heat and hot water; on flyers at the local deli where, yesterday, a woman picked up a flyer, stared at it and seriously muttered, “there goes the neighborhood.”

Burns, a bicycle mechanic and bassist, and Dr. Tracer, an instructor at a local community college, live on a four-year-old lease and pay $1000 a month for perhaps 700 sq. ft. – the back space of which Burns has converted into his bedroom.

Ten days ago I took the world’s longest nonstop flight from Hong Kong to Newark.

I’ve been sleeping here in Burns’s room when he leaves for gigs or work and writing with his laptop on the nightshift.

I rose from my daysleep just after midnight to find Dr. Tracer had dropped acid. He was about an hour into his trip when I awoke and he offered me a tab. I meditated, ate and dosed.

It was 1:20 in the morning and I was awake and alert for the next 15 and a half hours for a cool, rainy trip on a Saturday morning in June in Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Dr. Tracer illustrated without malice, frustration or the use of traditional spoken language that as a result of only 180-degree sensory input, a person who cannot hear evolves under a powerful sentiment of paranoia about what is behind them or out of their field of vision.

We began walking through Williamsburg at 2:30 in the morning, past the swinging doors of a bar. Partied-out, Friday-night boozers stumbled into the street looking for taxi or subway or deli or restaurant doors, their eyes blearily seeking something recognizable, the stench of smoke and alcohol wafting off them. Music drifted faintly out the open doors.

We stopped at a deli, where a broad swath of bottletops had been crushed into the asphalt in a dense, rectangular splay of circles – a speckled count of the beers drunk at the cornershop on hot summer days, when tossing a bottlecap out onto the street meant it got stuck in black, melted goo. A girl was hanging around the pay phone, Brooklyn summer night; couples fell into each other, lazy eyes smiled, engines fired up, a black sedan pulled away from the curb.

We had a coffee and made our way to a bar off McCarren Park. I drank a couple of martinis, Tracer had cold white wine. We conversed until 4:30, discussing broad philosophical topics casually. We were specific on the matters of death, writing and deafness. At one point Tracer and I agreed that when we were children, we were surrounded by others who did not understand how to communicate with us, whose methods were sympathetic but crude. This we agreed, drove us to write.

Two women, a redhead and a brunette, walked in and seduced two men. The women sent one man home alone and, as he stumbled out, but before the door had fully closed, the brunette said coldly to the redhead: “T-G- H-G!”- in time with his steps, with the door swinging closed and with the click shut, she mock-laughed as she fell forward on her stool, elucidating: “Thank. God. He’s. Gone.” as she turned back to the man who remained. At last call, they walked home with the second man, the brunette told him they wanted to teach him something. We were the last customers and left shortly after this.

A few blocks away, we ran into Tracer’s former roommate, a German who shared his apartment for the three years before Burns moved in. The German’s wife and child were out of town and he was up at 5:00 in the a.m. strolling neatly out of a bar, wide-eyed, looking for cocaine, asking if we had any – we did not.

The sun rose quickly, early on one of the longest days of the year. Dr. Tracer and I returned to the apartment, rolled a joint and continued talking. The joint was affirmative and Tracer had a broad laughing fit while in the bathroom alone. We decided to travel.

We had a coffee, then took the G and the F trains to the ends of their lines, arriving at Coney Island just past 8:00 a.m. It was a rainy morning and thick, grey clouds masked the sun. The light was a cold-white glow behind them. The beach was a neat, empty, expanse of sierra-colored loam, darkened by wetness in neat lines by tractors pulling wide metal rakes. The sand was made soft by the thin, white line of foam that the edge of each wave drew as a loose parallel to the horizon, a black straight-edge between the gray sky and the grey sea.

We began walking from the boardwalk to the beach silently, occasionally signing as we walked. We passed an elderly, disheveled woman, who was entirely wrapped in a blanket lying on the beach. After we passed this lump of cloth and human flesh, I saw peripherally that she rose from her reclined position. I then clearly heard her say, “who knows … maybe they like walking on the beach.”

I have never known LSD to contribute to paranoia in me. My use of it has generally resulted in hyper-attenuated hearing and sight and an alertness and remoteness of character. But even now, I wonder about what I heard and saw in that moment.

It could have been a woman on a phone call talking to someone else about something else, but her physical movements implied awareness of us. It could have been a crazed, semi-lucid homeless person babbling incoherently to herself, afraid of people approaching and passing her encampment on the beach or, it could have been an agent of some U.S. policing department observing us as we visited the beach. More engagements with seemingly random others on our trip would increase my feeling that we were being closely observed.

Dr. Tracer and I sat by the ocean, waded, ate a bag of chips on the lifeguard’s chair, had Saturday morning at Coney Island Beach for forty minutes and decried the lack of sunshine. I tape-recorded the sound of the waves and the seagulls to listen to back in the city.

I hoped, pathetically, that the sun would emerge until Tracer pointed out that the storm off the coast was headed inland. We left the beach before the rain started. As we left the boardwalk, vendors were opening for business. We had a coffee. The first drops of rain struck us as we crossed the street to the subway. We decided to go to Chinatown.

We caught the N and smoked a bowl in an empty car during the long stretch between the end of the line and 50th. Then we switched to the operator’s car to watch people. On the way back, I glared out the windows at the grey sky defiantly until we went underground. Dr. Tracer finally joked, “when we get out on the other side the sun will be shining down on you … vindictively!”

A black, 40-plus-year-old man, clean shaven and slightly balding, got on and sat beside me carrying a rustly collection of objects in two plastic bags; black plastic covering a white plastic bag inside. He had a small band-aid strip stuck on his head exposed below his high hairlines. The obvious rectangular strip was set perpendicular across a straight, red line of blood above the temple – the wound was obviously fake, staged. The man fumbled with his possessions, continuously muttering to himself. He could as easily have been a semi-crazed denizen of New York as an undercover NYPD detective.

Once we moved from the empty car in the back to the operator’s car, many people who got on the subway on their way to Manhattan seemed like characters, with staged aspects, or too-perfect appointments. I wore headphones, listening to a CD of sarangi and hearing the outside world leak in. Two women with children sat beside us, a young boy in a stroller, his mother holding his infant sibling. They were northeastern Asians, maybe Korean. Their grandmother was gently inspiring the children to be friendly. The son, cool, observant and thoughtful, seemed worried; the baby was still at the age of wondering at the world.

This was the operator’s car on the N, Saturday morning at 10 o’clock from south Brooklyn to Manhattan on a rainy day in June and I report with the impunity of a witness: public space in New York is undeniably equally peppered with lonesome egos, expressors of unimaginable histories, and potentially dangerous operatives for larger interests, both governmental and mafioso.

Another example: Agent 99, who subsequently led us to Canal street, starts with a pair of plain, white leather sneakers with silver dots evenly-spaced along the edge of the sole – thumbtacks – and a short, hot, controlled blaze of red, orange and yellow flames painted on the outer skin of each shoe, burning up, licking at the clean white leather shoetops toward the short, white, rolled columns – socks – that lead to a pale leg elegantly colored with intricate flowers of reds and blues – tattoos – into a sea of limpid green: an opaque, green silk skirt with a lime-orange border.

She wore a plain blouse and her hair was colored with straight, serene blonde streaks. She was reading a hardback with a romance cover and flowery letters that read, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” The glance of anyone on her side of the train who bent over to set something down, pick something up or tie a shoe was met with that leg, rocking up-and-down, regular as a pendulum, leading to a carefully put-together young woman on her way to Mallhattan.

We emerged from the subway to the rainstorm we’d seen hovering dark over the ocean. The World Trade Center Towers disappeared into thick, coal-colored clouds. The curved disks of the shoppers umbrellas floated through space, most were black, bobbing with the motion of their porters. The storm had traveled overhead as we traveled underground and was now present broadly over Canal street.

The huge, warm, tropical drops, falling down, on and around street signs and ads with Chinese and English text, reminded me of Taipei where I’d been two weeks before during the see-bei-oo rainy season.

We stood under the awnings of the Asian marketplace as rain poured down. Oblique, glowing flashes of white light flooded the clouds internally, leaked out the edges. Thunder rolled. Rain fell and we passed through it, mindless, walking between the drops.

We crossed between corners and in front of the slow-moving traffic. Many people shopped. Two tall women, one with a necklace that spelled, “dirty south,” in cursive, solid gold letters, awaited a man, shorter, rounder, balding, mustachioed, who was buying a souvenir. Young southern Europeans, women, were shopping. An elder, African-American man bought a pair of scarves. Il pleut.

We stopped at a Vietnamese cafe, had hot tea, then pho, rolls and beer. We returned to Brooklyn on the J. It was past noon.

Burns had gone to gig a wedding. His cats, Percy and Mingus wandered around the house, mewling for food. We fed them. We rolled another joint. We’d spent 27.00 on food, 25.00 on liquor, 4.50 on transportation and 3.00 for three coffees each, USD 59.50, total.

We were coming down. I was sitting in a chair opposite Dr. Tracer in his room in the apartment. It was silent. The grey light of the sky outside was only visible through crevices in the blinds and around their edges. Tracer had angled a desk in such a fashion that, sitting behind it, he could see himself and me and the door out, mirrors reflecting the interior of the room around him and nothing else. His back was to the window and the room behind him. I was able to see the window and the lightning that flashed outside.

This was the end of our trip, 12 hours after dosing and after a big meal and a long, wet walk in the rain. In my fatigued simplicity I became conscious of the sound of the weather. We were talking and the thunderstorm was accentuating Tracer’s speech. It grew in intensity and I could no longer focus on what Tracer was saying – the anxiety of it made me jump up. I suddenly remembered that the window in Burns’s room at the back of the apartment was open. I made my way to the back of the apartment saying, over my shoulder, “the rain! … I left the window open!” I realized only later that perhaps Tracer could not hear me or see my lips.

It was pouring. There was the continuous sound of thunder following ever-nearing lightning. At the back of the apartment, rainwater was hammering the wooden sill and dousing objects that lay near the window with a fine spray. Some water splashed my arm in just the time I took to shut the window. I went back to Tracer’s room flush with the excitement. He remained behind his desk, but was standing, pacing as he spoke.

I began to realize my error and clumsily showed him my arm, which now was hardly wet at all. He continued speaking and I realized I wasn’t following him. I sat down opposite him again, trying to compose the communication space that I had broken.

“… and <crack> … things that aren’t funny … No!” is what I heard him say as he took his seat and pointed down the hall.

Then, not immediately, but a second or two later – as Tracer continued speaking – there was an intensely loud, short, sharp <CRACK>! corresponding to a bolt of lightning that must have grounded somewhere very near to the apartment. It was shocking – by far the loudest sound I’d heard in days.

From the open window, I heard voices on the street raised in unison about the sound and flash – the remarks of people standing by the building outside for cover. Tracer’s face and posture showed no notice of any of it. I apologized for interrupting and we resumed our conversation about rent, writing and philosophy. The storm ended after twenty minutes.

Specifics of our conversation have been edited or lost to sobriety and the mindwash of sleep.

!ting was the name of the first audio magazine I ever conceived of and produced. It was made with Brent Kirkpatrick, Gordon Borsa and several other volunteers – an edition of 5,000 half-hour ( fifteen-minutes a side), cassette tapes to be placed on subways, park benches and buses all over New York that looked like this:

The concept was to collect sounds from the five boroughs in, under and around NYC in Spring of 1998 and eventually in each season to see if there were distinct seasonal changes in the soundscape.

Produced by new friends, meeting in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, for the first time, we created a voicemail for people to call and leave feedback which connected to a onebox e-mail account.

Here is a ten-minute excerpt of the audio with text describing and captioning content :

On June 10th of 1998, a warm summer evening in New York City, I conducted the Pulaski Bridge Drop, which was based on a bet or dare.

I told the architect Peter Dorsey and his friends at a dinner in Manhattan in 1998, that I would drop off the Pulaski Bridge – between North Brooklyn and Queens – into the Newtown Creek on the photographer Kenny Trice’s birthday as a performance present, and I did.

This blog entry is a chronological placeholder for videotape footage of the event which needs to be digitized and cut to be posted.

Today is a Monday in February and the sun is shining in New York through clear skies. It is cool but not cold and the blue in the sky is high and whitened by a thin wintriness. These events are from last week:

Karmic Rubber Band

B., my neighbor down the hall is a recent arrival in New York City from Austin, Texas where he has been for the last 6 years. Prior to that he lived in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Now he’s 27 and lives in our warehouse building in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and works in Manhattan at a retail bookstore (a national chain) and at The Bottom Line club. Last week, he had friends in town visiting from Baton Rouge.

MT., 27, and JO., 22, punks traveling from Baton Rouge to New York and back in a little, two-door, Honda CRX within which they were also sleeping, were staying alive by eating peanut butter sandwiches and MRE’s – Meals Ready to Eat, military rations purchased by MT.’s father, a soldier – while on the road. They were young scrappers who had taken to living in condemned buildings in Baton Rouge to keep from having to get too many jobs. They had been on the road for a month or so.

I met them briefly the night before last Monday morning when I ran into them in the hallway outside B.’s door. I asked them that morning what they were up to. They were building a frame for B.’s bedroom wall. I offered them some marijuana to help them stay focused and get through the task. They accepted, so I left them with a small amount of weed and my pipe and lighter and headed off to work.

I got into work and had a message from my friend M. who was taking the day off from work and planned to be downtown near my office. We made plans to meet for lunch. By 3:00, I hadn’t heard from M. so I decided to get some lunch for myself before my 4:00 meeting with the Vice President and several members of the Accounting department. I walked out of my office, though, and saw M. just walking towards me in the street. He had just gotten to the building. It was the first coincidence of the day. I took M. around the corner to Bar 6 on Avenue of the Americas for lunch.

Afterward we made plans to meet in the evening and I went back to work while he strolled off to the East Village. At 4:00, I went with C., the manager of the department in which I work, to the meeting with Accounting. It went all right and when I returned it was already 5:30. M. was waiting outside my office building for me. I brought him up to check out where I work and then we went walking.

We ended up at St. Mark’s Bar in the East Village, enjoying high-flying alto solos by Bird over quartets and quintets of swinging rhythms and over our heads as we sipped a couple of cold beers and talked about music and art. I went to the bathroom. While I was in there, M. got the high sign from a fellow at the bar. When I joined them, we all went outside to have a smoke. Out on the sidewalk we made a smoker’s circle. M. and I introduced ourselves to our host, R. who produced a fat little joint to pass.

R. is a light-skinned brother with a thin, evenly-groomed mustache. He has short, carefully styled hair and full lips that part to reveal a glowing set of teeth when he smiles. We all laughed and chatted as we passed the smoke, talking about all manner of things. Somehow the conversation came around to my space in Brooklyn. I mentioned that I was living in an unfinished warehouse space, that I was working on it to build a live/work studio. R., suddenly looked at me strangely as he pulled on the joint that had just been passed back to him by M. After exhaling, he asked if I was living in Greenpoint. I was surprised that he guessed. All I had said was that my place was in Brooklyn.

He was holding the joint, now-half smoked. He smiled and said, “Do you know a guy named B.? It was incredible: 8 million people in New York and we get pulled out by a guy who knows my neighbor. He was a co-worker of B.’s at the The Bottom Line. We couldn’t believe the coincidence. I laughed and said, “It’s even more perfect because just this morning I gave his friends a little bag to get them through the day.” We looked at each other and for just half a second locked eyes and then collectively looked down at the joint. I looked down at it, thinly burning with ashy flecks across it’s orangey tip in R.’s hand. “That’s my weed!” I half-shouted. We broke up the circle and fell away into individual peals of laughter, three high-flying brothers smoking a j. on the sidewalk in the Village and cracking up

The coaccidence was dazzling. Over in Brooklyn in the morning, I give away a small bag of weed to my neighbor’s friends and not ten hours later in Manhattan, a co-worker of his, unknowingly and independently gives my friend the high sign and ends up sharing a joint with me.

A couple of nights later, on the eve of their departure to Baton Rouge, I took MT. and JO. to dinner. I figured the two young punks would need a little better food than MRE’s to sustain them on the long journey back to the deep South. B. came along with. We went to the little Thai place in Greenpoint a few blocks from our place. When I told him the story of meeting his friend R., I ended by saying, “Hey man, I know I can trust you as my neighbor. I mean I lent you something and I got it back within less than a day, a borough away … I mean your shit is tight … you’re like a karmic rubber band.” And we all laughed and had a good time.

After we smoked the joint down, we went back in the bar to finish our beers. Then M. and I made our way out to my place. We hung out, smoked some more pot as I cleaned up and we made plans to go to St. Nick’s Pub. My hot water still wasn’t working then and I was really funky, so I asked M. if I could stay out at his house that night and he readily invited me to do so. I grabbed up some clothes, threw them into my work bag and M. and I were off to Harlem.

BROTHER CAME FLYING OUT THE SUBWAY DOOR …

… BALD HEAD shining, hollering, “Milky Way, Man, Milky Way!” paid the guy, got the candy and got back on the train before the doors closed. And we made our way on to 145th street. That’s what I wrote down on the back of a business card on the way up to M.’s. with brother unwrapping that thing all casual-like and munching on it as we rolled along. I’ll tell you the things I’ve seen on the New York City Subway one day.

We went up to M.’s place on 145th around the corner from St. Nick’s so he too could change clothes. He had a message on his machine from a woman he had met the week before who reported she would be at St. Nick’s that night. Earlier, after I had given the young punks the weed and come into the office, and before lunch with M. and my series of coincidences and coaccidents, I had written myself a short journal entry:

I have been having crazy nights.

… Just Long Enough

St. Nick’s Pub has an open mic jam session on Monday nights hosted by MC Murph and produced and promoted by Berta Indeed Productions. It features Patience Higgins and his quartet, who host some of the baddest local talent cutting one another in solotime and occasional newcomers and amateurs as well.

When we arrived things were sounding a little cheesy but they straightened up a bit and before long we were sitting and finding grooves as various soloists made their way through Parker charts and other standards. We weren’t there twenty minutes when M.’s friend arrived with her two girlfriends T. and J. – three chocolate-colored, gorgeous women who turned every head in the house at one time or another.

M.’s friend is beautiful. She is thin and curvy, about 5’6” tall in heels and she has a bright smile that she shares when inspired to do so. She is a poet and spoken-word artist who performs regularly in the New York area. Her friends are equally beautiful but uniquely so. T. had long cornrows and a round, gentle face. J. was an Amazon. Well over 6 feet in heels, she was tall and lanky and moved with a gangly beauty that gave her ebony arms a mystical quality.

J. was kinetic. Her arms moved smoothly and hypnotically, yet quickly and out of her own control. We all sat together, listened to the music and talked. J. and T. stood up often and danced, with one another and alone, bringing a desire to the hearts of everyone present and filling the room with the magic of music’s power to move a body and soul. They were sexy and nimble and moving sensually, energized by the swelling music that filled the little joint.

T. even arranged with MC Murph to sit in. She wanted to sing. It was her first time singing at St. Nick’s. She did “On Green Dolphin Street,” and after a little timidness in the first go around came back after the solos to finish strong and clear with only a slight, wavering tremolo to reveal what may have been any nerves on edge. She sang clearly and held her body still to the microphone staring evenly into the audience, smiling at her friends occasionally. We all enjoyed ourselves.

I am new to this place, to these people. I’ve learned it’s foolish to try anything too soon. So I was keeping quiet. Listening to the music and relaxing. I ached to let these three women know how much I admired their shapes and styles, but knew how stupid I would sound saying so. But it’s good, I think, to let people know you notice their beauty even if time and space conspire against doing anything about it in the now. If you have an opportunity, you’ve got to seize it.

J. was talking with us all at the table when she managed in the whirling motion of her long, beautiful arms, to knock over her drink. She pulled her chair back from the table, startled, as we picked up her drink and patted at the table with napkins, telling her not to worry about it. “Oh, God, my arms are just too long,” she apologized as she scooted back from the table, “I’ll just move back here.”

Quickly and for perhaps the first time all evening I spoke up, “No baby, your arms are … just … long enough,” I said, looking directly into her eyes, “come back over here and we’ll just move your drink.” I ordered another round for her and the other women and we were all too smooth for words.

M. and I strolled in the cold, back to his place. On the way I teased him about his friend. He kept saying, “She’s not my girlfriend!” and when he did I heard the desire behind it. We both knew how nice it would be if she were. Before going to bed, we listened to both sides of the Abbey Lincoln album he had bought earlier that day down in the Village. Her voice rang rich and sweet through the Harlem night as I drifted off to sleep on M.’s comfy old couch.

And that’s the story of last Monday.

<Break>

Tuesday I woke up at M.’s house with a bit of a headache from the gins-and-tonics the night before. Predominantly from the gins, I’m sure. I decided to skip work so I called in sick and stayed in the city. I caught the D down to 59th street and then went walking over to the Upper East Side. I had lunch by myself at a little French bistro – ordered a seared Tuna – and bought a couple of back pocket journal/sketchbooks. Then I strolled over to Gracious Home on 72nd and Third and picked up some paint brushes. I went home and slept. That night I was in, listening to Mingus and watching ships pass the Manhattan skyline as the lights went on in the City.

Wednesday I got up and went to work to try to achieve something, anything. It was good. I managed to make. There was the lecture … gotta get that lecture covered. It has too much to handle poorly.

Thursday I took off from work again, rainy and cold weather and the hot water finally on. I hung out with the visiting kids from Baton Rouge, made a dope deal (scored a $50 quarter bag of some weak-ass shit) and built a shower curtain set up (a “d” rod with a hanging cord to a metal ring in the ceiling of the bathroom). I took the Lousiana punks for their going away dinner that night. Had a hot shower for the first time in my space on Friday morning.

Friday was D. and being out and acting silly – drinks at Bar 6, dinner at L’Orange Bleue (430 Broome Street), drinks at bar ñ and then on to Soho. A late night walk through the East Village and ending up at a little cheesy brazilian bar called Anyway with a guitar duo who couldn’t keep time but could finger-pick like a couple of Brazilian freaks. We laughed and acted silly and misbehaved and were just happy together which we hadn’t been in months.

Then the weekend has been an explosion of food and drink and joyous celebrations of a million senses. My fortune cookies and horoscopes are all overwhelmingly positive and my mind is confused about what I am supposed to be doing. I keep going with the flow.

My new roommates have a 1971 Ford Gran Torino of a metallic green color with a white hard top. It is a beautiful old machine. I now have keys to that machine and on Sunday we loaded up into that low-riding cruiser, crossed the Queensboro Bridge and came into the city. We went to Pongal, the South Indian place in the twenties and then to this really cool sake bar downstairs on 9th street at 2nd in the East Village, it’s called Decibel.

Cruising on a Sunday afternoon. In the green machine.
New York: Manhattan. Brooklyn. Queens.